‘Are you a seer?’ said the boy’s father.
‘To make the future is to see it, so I suppose I am a seer,’ said the traveller. He stood.
‘Let us at least offer you a cup of ale for your generosity,’ said the boy’s father.
‘It is you who are generous to share such a story,’ said the man, ‘but now I must leave. There are others I must visit before the night is over.’
‘You will be a welcome guest if you bring such gifts,’ said the boy’s father.
‘I am always well rewarded for my exertions,’ said the man with a bow.
The next morning the bright winter sun woke the boy and he wondered if he had dreamed the night before. But the wolf pelt was beside him. His father was up and making some porridge. He smiled at the boy as he came out of the tent.
‘I didn’t know we had a famous storyteller among us, Snake in the Eye. Where did you get that tale from?’
The boy walked to his father’s side. ‘Didn’t you tell it to me?’
‘One like it,’ he said. ‘It was said your great-grandfather once fought a great wolf, though few believed him when he said he had.’
‘He returned with a great treasure, didn’t he?’
‘He did, and tales of the east.’
The boy nodded. ‘Perhaps one day they will tell tales of me.’
‘Perhaps they will, Snake in the Eye, for you have a poet’s heart and so will be sturdy in battle. The emperor will let you write your own story.’
‘I will write it with my sword on the bodies of my enemies,’ said the boy.
‘You are a poet and a warrior,’ said his father. ‘I am proud to call you my son.’
‘I will be a great slayer.’
The boy touched the stone at his neck for luck. In the clear morning the ocean was visible. In a day they would sail towards the dying sun, he thought, west for Miklagard, for hope and for a future of blood.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Adam Roberts for reading the first draft of this book and for his supportive comments. Thanks to Claire my wife for taking more than her fair share of childcare to give me the chance to finish this. Apologies to Eddo Brandes for taking the biscuit.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © M.D. Lachlan 2011
All rights reserved.
The right of M.D. Lachlan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2011 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 08966 2
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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M. D. Lachlan, Fenrir
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